Share

Detainees on Manus Island have to wait five to seven days to see a doctor unless it is deemed an “absolute emergency”, a Manus Island whistleblower has told Crikey.

Martin Appleby, a former guard at the Manus Island detention centre, says it would also be impossible for doctors to test for the septicaemia that has left Hamid Kehazaei brain-dead in Brisbane’s Mater Hospital. “There’s no way you can take blood and get it tested. There was no ice to pack the blood in to get it Port Moresby for testing.”

Free Trial

If you are human, leave this field blank.

Proudly annoying those in power since 2000.

Sign up for a FREE 21-day trial to keep reading and get the best of Crikey straight to your inbox

So if the Labor government is responsible when it pays a third party to install insulation subject to State OH&S laws and something goes wrong, what happens when a Coalition government actually kills someome in their care?

Abbott and Morrison have only succeeded in ensuring people die on Manus Island instead of the sea with their horrific policies. It is now time to close Manus, close Nauru, and deal with asylum seekers at home. After all, Abbott is prepared to send troops to Iraq after 2 US journalists were killed. Surely 2 Iraqi asylum seekers dying on his watch, thanks to his policies, requires him to abandon his horrific and heartless approach to people fleeing countries where Australia is sending troops.

Scott Morrison is fond of accusing the Labor Party of drowning asylum seekers at sea, as though they actually held them under the water until they died. Those deaths were an unintended consequence of the Labor Party’s policies. Whereas the deaths and other terrible conditions on the Liberal Party’s watch ARE their policies.

Scott Morrison will be mightily pleased. The deterrence value of his policies has increased further with yet another death. It would have been more humane to have machine gunned them all at sea rather than the slow living death those poor people are being subjected to in our name.